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In the Fiction of John Barth, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Thomas Pynchon

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In the Fiction of John Barth, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Thomas Pynchon Challenging and Violating Ontological “Worlds” in the Fiction of John Barth, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Thomas Pynchon Alex Reece Senior ORCID identifier 0000-0002-5004-6053 Ph.D. - Arts Submitted 12/17 School of Culture and Communication This thesis is submitted in total fulfilment of the degree. Abstract My dissertation examines instances of ontological violation in postmodern fiction through a close reading of John Barth, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Thomas Pynchon. Each reading will focus on diegetic violations generated through either ekphrastic or epistolary writing. I use literary theorists Gérard Genette, Patricia Waugh, Mark Currie and William Nelles (among others) to create a framework with which to analyse diegesis creation and violation. Central to my dissertation is Brian McHale's understanding of "literary ontology" and his insights into the ontological foregrounding that occurs in postmodern texts. The first chapter begins by introducing and examining epistemological narrative framing. This is done to demonstrate the codependence of epistemological and ontological framing; as often epistemological framing is necessary to create a “world” within a “world”. The first chapter also presents various different examples of narrative frame breaking and, more specifically, examines the various manifestations of ontological violations; for example mise en abîme. Each subsequent chapter thereafter is dedicated to each of my chosen authors. An assessment of my findings are outlined in my conclusion. This is followed with closing thoughts on future directions of research. The creative writing component of my PhD incorporates both hypodiegetic and extradiegetic ontological violations to produce various comical and philosophical metafictional outcomes. The primary questions posed in the dissertation (and fiction) are: how are “worlds” framed and established in fictional texts? Moreover, what are writers trying to achieve by putting into question the existential status of the “worlds” in a fictional texts? i Declaration This thesis is comprised only of original work towards the Ph.D. - Arts. Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used. This thesis is 88,000 words, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices, as approved by the Research Higher Degrees Committee. ii Acknowledgements I would like to offer my sincere gratitude to my primary supervisor Associate Professor Justin Clemens for his continuous encouragement and guidance throughout the writing of this PhD. Further, I would like to thank my fiction supervisor Associate Professor Marion Campbell for her invaluable insights and feedback on my creative writing. Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my family, Danielle and Imogen, for their patience and support while I was assembling words. iii List of Figures Figure 1 - Klein bottle 31 Figure 2 - Narrative structure of One Thousand and One Nights 54 Figure 3 - Narrative structure of Dunyazadiad 55 iv Contents Abstract i Declaration ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Metafiction, narratorial positions and ontological violations 10 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 10 The ontology of fictional text .................................................................................... 12 Narratorial positions in fictional texts ...................................................................... 15 Modernist narrative framing .................................................................................... 20 The provenance of metafiction ................................................................................. 26 Metafiction theorised ................................................................................................ 29 Two modes of ontological violation: diegesis ⇆ extradiegesis or extradiegesis ⇄ hypodiegesis .............................................................................................................. 35 Mise en abîme: reiterating information across diegeses .......................................... 38 Summary ................................................................................................................... 42 Chapter 2. John Barth: framed frame stories, conflated “authors” and ontological violations through letters 45 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 45 Literature: from fatigue to vigour ............................................................................. 49 Framing framed stories in Dunyazadiad ................................................................. 54 Lost in the Funhouse of metafiction ......................................................................... 58 Menelaiad and mise en abîme .................................................................................. 60 Conflated “authors” and ontological violations through LETTERS ......................... 65 Summary ................................................................................................................... 75 v Chapter 3. Alain Robbe-Grillet: “world” creation through ekphrasis 78 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 78 The literary device of ekphrasis ................................................................................ 85 Looping “worlds” in The Erasers .............................................................................. 90 Trompe-l’œil in Project for a Revolution in New York ............................................ 95 The non sequitur ontology of In the Labyrinth ....................................................... 101 Ekphrasis in In the Labyrinth ................................................................................ 106 Summary .................................................................................................................. 110 Chapter 4. Thomas Pynchon: “world” creation through ekphrasis 114 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 114 Mise en abîme: “The Courier’s Tragedy” in The Crying of Lot 49 .......................... 118 Writing television: ekphrastic mise en abîme in The Crying of Lot 49 ................. 127 Writing television: conflating television with the “real” in Vineland .................... 129 Gravity’s Rainbow: unstable narration and direct address ....................................137 Writing cinema: absolute ekphrasis in Gravity’s Rainbow ................................... 142 Summary ................................................................................................................. 148 Conclusion 151 Future Directions 155 Bibliography 159 The Woman Who Plays Claire in Dusk 181 Epilogue .................................................................................................................... 181 Part I ........................................................................................................................ 185 Part II ....................................................................................................................... 207 Part III ..................................................................................................................... 224 Part IV...................................................................................................................... 256 Part VI......................................................................................................................288 Epilogue continued ................................................................................................. 305 Addendum .............................................................................................................. 308 vi Introduction I think we should put some mountains here. Otherwise, what are all the characters going to fall off of? Laurie Anderson, Big Science (1982) Fictional worlds need to be populated with things such as mountains. As Anderson says, if you want a character to fall, then you need something to “fall off of”. Yet, while authors of realist fiction discreetly construct stable, mimetic worlds, other authors – those iconoclasts armed with a postmodern sensibility – simultaneously construct, tear down and violate worlds of fiction. Rather than describing a mountain and having a character fall off, the quote above unveils the process of construction. As such, the quote is self-reflexively postmodern in that it directly addresses its audience with the question of world construction. In fact, Anderson’s use of the editorial “we” frames the audience as co-conspirator with the omniscient author. This dissertation examines examples of such ontological creation and violation in postmodern fiction by conducting a close reading of three exemplars of this technique: John Barth, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Thomas Pynchon. Each reading approaches this literary device through a different phase of postmodern writing in order to examine its operation in various divergent contexts. The first author I examine is the metafictional writer John Barth, with a primary 1 focus on his epistolary1 novel LETTERS (1979). This novel, with its central conceit of wild and overt intra-textuality, results in the ontological paradox in which the author and characters cohabit and scrutinise
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